HBO's Game of Thrones set a series high in total viewers in last night's second season finale with a total of 4.2 million viewesrs for , besting its previous high of 3.9 million viewers. The encore drew another 910,000 viewers for a total of 5.1 million viewers on the night.

Separately, Veep saw its second most-watched episode of the season with 1.2 million viewers and Girls set series highs in its initial telecast with 1.1 million viewers.

Drogo doesn’t come back in the books. What I can tell you is that everything she sees in the House of the Undying in the books is a vision of future events. Not sure if they are going with that in the show or not though.

Freddy Arrow

@ The End

“For arguements sake, Book 3 will be 20 episodes anyway that has been confirmed, doing 1 book a year, with Books 4 and 5 already out anyway, and Book 6 near enough complete, by the time they finish adapting Book 6, Book 7 will likely be done(Which is the final book). ”

I hope you’re right, but the 5th book just came out last year and Martin has been taking about 5 years per book. To have book 7 out in just a few years seems VERY optimistic. I wouldn’t be surprised if he never finishes book 7. The dude isn’t the healthiest looking guy in the world.

Crazy Eye Broyles (AJ)

@Epic

They had some. You should wonder why Winterfell got burned down if that was the Northmen out there trying to take it back for Robb. Should probably wonder what is going to happen to Samwell Tarley. Littlefinger sure does like Sansa doesn’t he? Surely he doesn’t have an agenda there. And I feel pretty bad for all those guys at the Fist of the First Men with those walkers headed that way lol.

Crazy Eye Broyles (AJ)

George Martin doesn’t have any health problems other than he could stand to lose weight. He is older though. And not every book has taken 5 years. There was only a year between two of them. That being said he just started writing book 6 this year, but I think he moved some stuff he wrote from book 5 into 6. I think he will be done by the time they get to those last 2 or 3 seasons.

Oh, there is a contingency in place for the show if he should die before he writes the last book.

Kenny

Book 3 will be 2 seasons (10 episodes per season) not a 20 episode season just in case someone is thinking that right now.

Remote Patrolled

Okay – quick question everyone – this has been bugging me all day!

If Winterfell was under siege by about 500 people how did Theon’s men escape when there were only 20 of them.

Am I missing something here? Just felt very unexplained on the finale…!

Epic

@ crazy Eye Broyles (AJ)
Do you have an email or instant messaging screen name you’d be comfortable posting on here i have a question and i rather not spoil this for other people.

Richard Steven Hack

The main good points about the finale were the reversal of Tyrion’s fortunes – which I assume he will deal with early next season – and the Danys reversal of her previously bad fortune and of course…ZOMBIES!

MORE ZOMBIES THAN THE WALKING DEAD! THIS is HOW you do ZOMBIES, bozos at TWD!

Flaming dragons and zombies! That’s what I’m talking about!

And Arya’s Faceless Man friend Jaqen H’ghar is an impressive character. One hopes he’s around in season three.

All in all, it was a good finale.

Richard Steven Hack

Remote Patrolled: I agree, that wasn’t clear to me either. Or why the Stark boys and Osha had to leave when there were 500 Stark men outside… Also if there were so many, why didn’t they prevent the burning of Winterfell?

I have to assume there really weren’t 500 men there, and it was all a ruse by some of Rob Stark’s men to trick Thereon… Either that or there is some really bad continuity…

Executive producer D.B. Weiss said they’re on a 12-month production cycle already and ten episodes is all that’s realistic.

I wouldn’t be shocked if they manage to increase the season length by an episode or two, but anything more than that or shorter hiatuses seems very unlikely.

Ultima

@Richard Steven Hackwhy didn’t they prevent the burning of Winterfell?

That’s an intentionally missing piece of the puzzle.

@ObserverOK, spoil me, how did Drogo come back?

He was just an illusion created by the warlock, Pyat Pree.

SergioCQH

There were not 500 Stark men outside. There 500 Dreadfort men led by Ramsay Snow, the bastard son of Roose Bolto.

Bee

awesome for girls and veep. i hope both continue to grow cus they are phenomenal.

CCV

I absolutely hate the hipster-privileged-white-girl-chic of Girls, but there are hundreds of worse shows on television.

CCV

They only have so much in their budget, even with their success. If you want the production quality to remain as high as it is, you’ll only want 10 episodes. Plus, it helps tighten the writing, to make sure there’s no filler seeping in. I’d rather have 10 purposeful episodes than 13 basically good ones.

Epic

I’ll just post my questions.

How did Stannis survive? Didn’t he get captured in episode #9?

How did Daenari’s people survive? I thought they got slaughtered and she didn’t have that many people to begin with.

Gomer

@ultima:
A practical reason to shoot back to back seasons is that the child actors aren’t getting any younger. They already have the source material for 5 books so it may make sense to shoot! as much material before the child actors outgrow their parts.

SteveA

I agree, 10 episodes aren’t enough. I haven’t read the books, but I could tell by just this finale, that some characters were just added in to hold people over until next season. It was crammed. With all that being said, it’s still the best show on TV right now. Well,until next sunday at 9 EDT.